Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Volume 25 № 2 2022, 5-21 © Khazar University Press 2022 DOI: 10.5782/2223-2621.2022.25.2.5 Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 1, * 1 Yaser Hadidi; 2Ilham Taghiyev; 3Saadat Ahmadova University of Tabriz/Khazar University; 2, 3Khazar University, Baku, Azerbaijan * Corresponding author: yaser.hadidi@khazar.org Abstract Nowadays mass media plays crucial roles in people’s lives. Online newspapers constitute a part of media discourse, which makes for extremely important bodies of text for the purposes of research in discourse analysis. In news headlines, careful and sensitive use is made of linguistic devices in order to make the headlines unique and different, influence the readers, create trust for the newspaper, and, most importantly, invite and encourage the reader to proceed to the whole story and the main body of the report/news report. In this spirit, this study is a linguistic analysis of headlines in the political section of established online American newspapers. The data for this study comprises 50 headlines collected from 5 online newspapers revolving around the theme of Donald Trump. It aims to explore the linguistics structure of newspaper headlines in the sample articles from these 5 most widely read newspapers: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. In this qualitative-quantitative study, use is made of the model by Montgomery (2007) that takes account of a comprehensive picture that pays due respects to linguistic, semantic and discursive properties of headlines alongside each other in a complete package. The findings are mapped out in the form of figures and charts. The results of the frequency analysis showed that newspapers mostly used ‘full sentence’ and ‘ellipsis’ in their headlines. The qualitative analysis revealed that most of the semantic, linguistic and discursive strategies used in headlines are geared to the ‘tactical incompleteness strategy’, a helpful notion and a part of Montgomery’s model. Keywords: linguistic devices, headline, news, discourse strategies, functions of headlines, newspapers. Introduction and Background The emergence of internet has had a major impact on news output and consumption. Notably, core features of online journalism, such as immediacy and interactivity, have led to new levels of fluidity; stories are now regularly written, edited, shared, and consumed. This presents new challenges, readings and complications in the scene of communication. Shevtsova (2019) points out that newspapers and 6 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova magazines are abandoning their “paper life-span” in favor of a digital one. This technical procedure goes hand in hand with the change of its pragmatic side and the functions served, like manipulation and commercialization, as argued by E. Herman and N. Chomsky (2002). In order to influence their readers, maintain readership status, and continue exercising their target ideologies on their readers, newspaper writers should be careful with the language of headlines, and they usually are. Newspapers seek to impact public opinion on economic, political and other matters. Nowadays, lots of different printed as well as online newspapers try to attract readers’ attention. What the reader notices first is the headline of the article, which is followed by the decision whether to read on into the article or not. Headlines are the connectors between reader and text. As Bell (1984) says, journalism is an ‘exercise in audience design’. This viewpoint stresses that newspaper language has often encapsulated what will sell to readers and how facts could better be designed and interpreted to accomplish this commercial goal at any given moment. As a result, newspapers have often tended to blend into their readerships' desires and find ways to echo them within their own idiom, thus reconstructing the ‘original’ audience in the process. In light of all this, the headlines of news pieces and articles should be carefully detected and analyzed. In this connection, news writers draw on linguistic devices. The use of linguistics devices has different effects on headlines. The language of newspaper headlines has been investigated by many researchers (Al-Hindawi & Hmood Ali, 2018; Alipour & Monjezi, 2016; Bonyadi & Samuel, 2013; Chovanec, 2014). However, most of them tend to analyze print newspapers. Moreover, the linguistic features of headlines are generally identified without distinguishing them as broadsheets and tabloids; online and print. In this spirit, this research attempts to analyze the language of online newspapers. Finally, to the best of our knowledge, specific studies on most widely read American newspapers using this model do not exist per se. The news can be defined as information about current or recent events, happenings or changes taking place outside the immediate purview of the audience and considered to be of likely interest or concern to them (Montgomery, 2007). The news is not characterized as a picture of reality, which may be correct or biased, but as a frame through which the social world is routinely constructed (Van Dijk, 1988). Fowler (1991) also believes that the news is not the reflection of reality; he considers the news as a product shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces, not as a reflection of reality. Newspapers are one of the instruments for conveying the ‘news’. According to its publication policy, there are two types of newspapers: popular Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 7 newspapers and quality newspapers. The popular newspapers’ policy is primarily to report on soft news. Soft news is news that is readily interpreted by all types of audiences, regardless of their level of education. Readers may not require any prior experience or advanced knowledge to comprehend the news. Soft news covers news on violence, major accidents, homicide, rape, entertainment, and disasters. People are more likely to pay attention to bad news than to good news, so soft news is the news that more people would pay attention to. Furthermore, popular newspapers prefer to use eye-catching vocabulary and eye-catching phrases, as well as pictures in bright colors such as green, orange, and pink, to distract readers. Reah (2002) and Richardson (2007), using somewhat different terminology, classify newspapers into three types. Reah (2002) makes a distinction among 'broadsheets', 'middle-ranged' tabloids and 'tabloids'. Richardson’s (2007) classification involves 'broadsheets' such as the Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, 'mid-market' papers such as the Daily Mail, The Daily Express and 'red-top' tabloids such as The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Star. ‘Broadsheets’ and ‘quality’ newspapers are taken as being similar and ‘tabloids’ and ‘popular’ newspapers are considered as being synonyms. These newspapers have different kinds of readers. Elite and upper middle class tend to read broadsheets newspapers, lower middle classes tend to read midmarkets, and working classes tend to read red-tops. Under the impact of new technologies and the internet, newspaper production has resulted in a dramatic shift from ‘traditional’ to ‘online’. Journalism and technology have always influenced each other. Technological changes impacted how journalists work, the kind of content they provide, the news industry as a whole, and the interaction between news organizations, readers, and journalists. Newspapers began adapting to technological advancements in order to succeed in the future, so an online version was inevitable. As Haneefa, and Nellikka (2010) indicate, digital newspapers have significant advantages over traditional news sources, including the potential to provide up-to-date material, quick access to a vast variety of newspapers and their libraries without extra costs, the benefits of being interactive and paperless, and the opportunity to bookmark, print, copy, and edit the contents of online newspapers. Thus, readership for all types of newspapers has declined as more subscribers have taken to the Internet for up-to-date news from a number of web outlets, mostly for free. According to Montejo and Adriano (2018), in the world of media, headlines are as important part of the news as titles are for any book or essay. Headlines shape the overall picture of the news in the readers’ eyes. Paying attention to the headlines of the news, the reader may decide whether to read the entire article. News headlines 8 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova are the most significant portion of the news for they deliver a fast mode of information to those who have no time to read the complete details of news items (Javed & Mahmood, 2011). Conboy’s approach (2007) echoes Van Dijk’s (1998), rearticulating it: headlines have three main functions: 1. they provide a brief overview of the main news, 2. they constitute an indicator of the style and values of the news outlet, and 3. they catch the attention of the reader. It seems that the headline is the heart of the newspaper article, as it conveys brief information and catches the readers’ attention simultaneously. According to Van Dijk (1998), media discourse in general, and news reports in particular, should also be accounted for in their own right, i.e., as particular types of language use, or as textual manifestations of specific kinds of socio-cultural practice. The power of media is undeniable since it has triggered many critical studies in many disciplines: linguistics, semiotics, pragmatics, and discourse studies. As an essential part of newspaper articles, headlines have their own mode of discourse. Newspaper headlines play a significant part in the communication act that newspapers engage in. According to Taiwo (2007), headlines are used to “initiate, maintain, and shape discourse on readers’ perspectives” (p.224). The presence of a series of linguistic conventions that characterize headlines has been stated by a number of authors (e.g. Develotte & Rechniewski, 2001; Dor, 2003; Iarovici & Rodica, 1989; Lodhi et al, 2019; Magtira & Bernardo, 2018; Chovanic, 2014). What we find to be the telegraphic style of English headlines is a variable that changes according to culture and time. Different languages and cultures will have their own conventions of constructing headlines, which may be quite distinct from those of headlines in English (Chovanic, 2014). Headlines in Czech press, for example, are comparatively more "narrative," with no significant grammatical differences that distinguish them from the corresponding non-headline statements encoding the same text. The traditional manipulation of temporal deixis, which is used in English headlines, is not used in the same manner in Czech headlines. There are no deictic centers projected: past-time occurrences are made in the past tense rather than the present tense as in English. Compared to the English model, French headlines are distinct with their greater range of tenses. In terms of headlines’ timespecificity, the current conventions of English headlines are the product of many centuries of advancement of this textual model: the headline evolved from a far more narrative style that worked on several levels and reflected all of the story's core elements. As an illustration of the intercultural variability in the linguistics of headlines, English headlines are characterized by their present tense usage. With the widely Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 9 held belief that headlines have both a semantic and a pragmatic function, the presence of certain tenses in headlines is typically linked to the pragmatic function of appealing to readers. Present tense feature of headlines increases level of immediacy, significance, relevance resulting in stronger and more involved interaction of readers. McCarthy and Carter (1994, p.96) outline that “the choice of tense and aspect can be seen to have a discourse dimension, in that the choices are not determined purely by semantic factors relating to ‘objective’ time”. Moreover, the authors point out that “tense and aspect issues have become part of the conventions of the genre”. In light of all this background, this study is motivated by the justification to contribute to the ongoing body of insight into and literature on the linguistics, pragmatics, and discourse of headlines by choosing a novel approach and model and textual data to reveal and support knowledge on the ideological, linguistic and critical function of headlines in popular online news platforms and outlets. Methodology Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze selected newspaper headlines based on Montgomery’s (2007) model in order to compare linguistic devices and see of these linguistic patterns can generate insights into the functions of headlines in popular frontline news outlets lines in terms of the upper semantic strata of discourse, ideology and the genre of news discourse and headlines as one meaning-making component in them. The point is to see whether there are any differences according to this model in the headlines of five most popular and widely read political American newspapers. The Corpus The materials in this study were selected from among online newspaper sources. Based on all major figures and statistics, the following is a list of 5 most widely read US newspapers in order of circulation: 1. The Wall Street Journal 10 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova 2. USA Today 3. Los Angeles Times 4. The New York Times 5. The Washington Post After choosing the newspapers, 10 headlines were sampled randomly from each newspaper, adding up to 50 headlines overall. This corpus size was controlled for practical purposes of stronger manual analysis, to apply the analytic model in a rigorous way to the data. Sampling and Procedure The sampling procedure was both purposive and random. The purposive sampling section involved first a pool of headlines selected from these five most widely read newspapers, all of which were judged by the researchers to be centered on the theme of Donald Trump, to keep the topic constant. Only the headlines of 2021 (FebruaryMay) were sampled. In doing so, the theme was held constant using the key word Trump, since there were a lot of articles in 2021 specifically treating some political or economic aspect of his presidency, as well as many tough challenges the US faced in that year, in many forms. Only headlines in the political section of the newspapers were selected so as to eliminate extraneous variables. Then, from this pool, 50 headlines were randomly chosen as the finalized data for analysis in this research. This analysis will give us insights into the linguistic nature of headlines in a sample selected from 5 most popular USA newspapers in their political news pieces. Research Questions The research questions are reiterated here: 1. What is the linguistic and discourse structure of newspaper headlines in the sample articles from five selected American newspapers? 2. Assuming that the thematic topic is held constant for all data sets, what differences in linguistic and discourse structure emerge for the headlines analyzed in the data? Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 11 The Model of Analysis Montgomery’s (2007) news headlines analysis model incorporates two analytic tools: The semantic of Headlines and The Lexico-grammar of headlines. The Semantic of Headlines breaks down into persons, Events/Actions and Circumstances, and The Lexico-grammar of headlines is analyzed alone, tailored to the linguistic details and composition and news headlines. In this spirit, as far as our review of literature held up, this model is one of the strongest models to analyze headlines as it brings together both a linguistic and an above-the-linguistics-alone package in its approach to headlines. Results and Discussion Representation of the Findings In this section, the results of the data analysis are introduced using charts that lay out the linguistic devices in the five American newspaper headlines in focus. These charts aim to show the findings in the form of the statistics concerned. According to their semantics, the general results of all the headlines analyzed and the comparison of the five newspapers are given in 4 charts below. In the first chart below, the general results of the first section in Montgomery’s (2007) model for the analysis of headlines, i.e. Persons in the Semantics Headlines, are depicted. 1. PERSONS IS MCD IS&MCD None None, 3, 6% IS&MCD, 29, 58% IS, 14,… MCD, 4, 8% Figure 1. Analysis of the data in terms of the component of ‘Persons’ in the Model of Analysis 12 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova According to the data analysis, both MCD (Membership Categorization Device) and Individualization Strategy (IS) are used in 29 headlines out of 50, adding up to 58% as its percentage out of 100%. In second place, only individualization strategy is used in 14 headlines out of 50 or 28 % in the 50 headlines. In the third place, only MCD is used in 4 headlines out of 50 that also means 8% of the total headlines. In 3 headlines or 6% of the total headlines, none of the semantics-type strategies is used, according to our model of analysis. Figure 2. Analysis of the data in terms of the component of ‘Events/Actions’ in the Model of Analysis In the second chart above, in terms of category-bound activities, clash with MCD is observed in 24 headlines out of 50 or 48% of the total headlines. In 26 headlines out of 50 or 52% of total headlines, clash with MCD is not explicitly observed. 3. CIRCUMSTANCES used 8% not used 92% used not used Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 13 Figure 3. Analysis of the data in terms of the component of ‘Circumstances’ in the Model of Analysis In the third chart above, the results to do with the use of circumstances as emerging in all the headlines is depicted. The chart shows that only 4 headlines out of 50 (8%) refer in some way to circumstances of the event (explicit adverbs of time and place), while 46 headlines or 92% of the total headlines data did not include cover such over circumstances of time and place in relation to the events in focus in the headlines. Comparison of Semantics of five Newspapers 15 10 5 0 The Wall Street The New York Journal Times Individualization strategy USA Today MCD Los Angeles Times Clash Washington Post Circumstances Figure 4. The comparison across the news headlines data in terms of the component of ‘Semantics’ in the Model of Analysis In the fourth chart above, a comparison of the semantics of five newspapers is given. The result shows that individualization strategy is used mostly by USA Today in 10 headlines out of 10 which makes 100%. The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post used this strategy at the same level which contains 9 headlines out of 10 or 90% of 10 headlines; however, The New York Times used it in 6 headlines out of 10, which makes 60% out of 100%. MCD was the most used device by USA Today in 8 headlines out of 10 which covers 80%. Washington Post and Los Angeles Times used it at the same level which contains 7 out of 10 or 70%. The Wall Street Journal used this device in 6 out of 10, or 60%, while The New York Times used it in 5 headlines out of 10, or 50% of 10 headlines. In terms of category-bound activities, clash is mostly observed in The Wall Street Journal, which contains 8 out of 10 or 80%. Los Angeles Times and Washington Post used it in 5 headlines out of 10 which covers 50%, while USA Today used it in 4 out of 10 or 40%. It was the least used device by The New York Times with 2 headlines out of 10 or 20%. Circumstances were mentioned in 3 headlines (30%) in The Wall Street Journal, while USA Today used it only in 1 headline out of 10, which makes for 10%. Other newspapers didn’t mention circumstances of the events. 14 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova In terms of the lexicogrammar of headlines in the model used (Montgomery, 2007), the results of the data analysis are depicted in the charts below. Lexicogrammar of all headlines 50 42 40 31 30 20 9 10 4 6 0 Full sentence Ellipsis Non-finite cl. Nominalization Lexical-compounding Figure 5. An overview of the lexicogrammatical devices used in the whole headlines data In figure 5, an overview of the lexicogrammar for all the headlines data is represented. As the chart shows, the most used lexicogrammatical consideration is ‘full sentence’ which comprises 42 headlines out 50 or 84%. In second place, ellipsis has been used in 31 headlines out of 50 which makes up 62% of the data. In third place, nominalization has been used in 9 headlines out of 50, which covers 18% of 50 headlines. The results show that lexical compounding has been used in 6 headlines out of 50, or 12% of 50 headlines, while the non-finite clause strategy has been used in 4 out of 50, which covers 8% out of 100%. Comparison of Lexico -grammar of five headlines 10 8 6 4 2 0 The Wall Street Journal Full sentence The New York Times Ellipsis USA Today Non-finite clause Los Angeles Times Washington Post Nominalization Lexical-compounding Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 15 Figure 6. The comparison across the news headlines data in terms of the component of ‘Lexicogrammar’ in the Model of Analysis In figure 6, a comparison of the lexico-grammatical considerations used in the headlines of the five American newspapers analyzed is laid out. The results show that as the most frequently used and favored device, 9 cases out of 10 of the strategy ‘full sentence’ have been used by The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times compared to The York Times which has used 8 ‘full sentence’ cases and Washington Post with 7 ‘full sentence’ types. ‘Ellipsis’ was the most frequently used strategy by The Wall Street Journal with 8 headlines. Similar to The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post has used ‘ellipsis’ in 7 headlines, while Los Angeles Times used it in 6 headlines. The New York Times and USA Today used ‘ellipsis’ at the same level. ‘Nominalization’ was the most used device by USA Today with 6 headlines which makes 60%. The York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post have used ‘nominalization’ at the same level with only one headline out of ten in each newspaper. However, nominalization was not utilized by The Wall Street Journal. ‘Non-finite clause’ was used by Washington Post in 2 headlines out of 10 headlines and by The New York Times and Los Angeles Times in 1 headline out of 10. However, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today didn’t use non-finite clauses. Lexical-compounding was used by Washington Post in 3 headlines out of 10 and by The New York Times in 2 headlines out of 10. The Wall Street Journal only used 1 lexical-compounding in the ten headlines analyzed. However, Los Angeles Times and USA Today didn’t utilize lexical-compounding in their political headlines. Discussion of the Findings This chapter includes a discussion of the main findings according to the data analysis of the headlines in the political section of five American newspapers. The purpose of this qualitative-quantitative research study was to identify linguistic devices based on Montgomery’s (2007) model for the analysis of headlines. The purpose is to see whether there are any differences according to this model in the headlines of five most popular American newspapers, and also to see if we can gain some more insight into the linguistic, semantic and discursive nature of news headlines. This section also contains a discussion of research questions of this study and responses to these questions. 16 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova 1. What is the linguistic and discourse structure of newspaper headlines in the sample articles from five selected American newspapers? 2. Assuming that the thematic topic is held constant for all data sets, what differences in linguistic and discourse structure emerge for the headlines analyzed in the data? In the previous chapters, we have talked about functions of headlines and how linguistic devices help headline writers to achieve their goals. It was mentioned that headlines provide information for the readers, attract attention, engage in silent dialogic interaction with the audience, etc. Authors such as Ifantidou (2009) mention that newspaper headlines have only one function which is ‘attention-getting’ rather than ‘information-providing’, since headlines do not accurately represent the reality, or the news they purport to. However, the results of our study show that political news headlines in widely read and popular political American newspapers have informative functions as well. Another author Gattani (2005) defines three broad headline functions: the informative, indicative, and the eye-catcher. He also mentioned that the best headlines 'tell and sell,' that is, they instantly inform the reader of the news while still persuading them that the article is worth reading. As Gattani points out, our study shows that headlines in political news pieces in these American newspapers function as ‘tell and sell’. Thus, most of the headlines (42 out of 50) were full sentences that helped to convey more adequate information to the reader; on the other hand, most of the headlines (27 out of 50) used flattening effect which helped to attract the reader. According to Montgomery (2007), this flattening effect is another prominent aspect of headlines that are full sentences in their linguistic structure. The flattening effect makes the information in the headline tenseless, encouraging the reader to continue to the story. The flattening effect causes the reader to have to read the story to discover indexical and pragmatic details of the story and its contextual parameters. The results indicate that the five most popular political American newspapers have more common features than different ones. In terms of the semantics of headlines, the newspapers preferred both individualization strategy and MCD (Membership Categorization Device). When it comes to category-bound activities, newspapers are not intent on making explicitly clashing effects in their headlines; there is a tendency in most of them to convey to the reader some clash between the social practice and the social groups the social agents being portrayed in the news headline are inserted into, but this is more implicit than explicit. This is a feature that Montgomery does not treat in his model. Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 17 In terms of circumstances, these five newspapers avoid mentioning place or time of the action. This shows that most news agencies, in line with a tactical incompleteness strategy, avoid inserting circumstances into their headlines. Linguistically and discursively speaking, most headlines in this study followed a ‘tactical incompleteness’ strategy, to make the reader curious and interested enough to want to follow up and continue to the story itself. In terms of the lexico-grammar of headlines, the results of the data analysis showed that the most favored device was ‘full sentence’. This suggests that the traditional assumption that news headlines should use telegraphic, non-full-sentence grammatical compositions is no longer the case in established newspaper headlines of the modern day. We suggest this is due to the more conscious and informed discourse strategy employed by news discourses to the effect that full sentences NOT containing the details of the story, but strategically and tactically stimulating the readership to go on to the story itself, are a better way of getting the readers motivated and encouraged to read the story and, in turn, continue having the faith in the news agency that the stakeholders of it have in mind. The second most frequently used device was ‘ellipsis.’ We suggest that, in line with the understanding that ellipsis is a pervasive strategy in the English language, headlines make ample use of it in line with the tactical incompleteness strategy, to maintain reader interest and stimulate the readership to proceed to the story, as the main goal of news headlines. In these headlines, most of the ‘ellipsis’ was article omission. The use of articles in the headlines can create an image that the given information in the headline is old; however, its omission makes the information in the headline fresh and new. This shows that in terms of ellipsis, newspapers suit Montgomery’s model. Eliding articles again falls in line with the tactical incompleteness strategy; in terms of the psycholinguistic place and role of such ellipsis, this is known to send the reader automatically looking for the reconstruction of the elided articles in his/her head and rebuilding the full sentence with the elided syntactic elements inserted back in. In news headlines, this fits interestingly into tactical incompleteness strategy, because the reader’s psycholinguistic process of reconstruction and re-insertion triggers their simultaneous search and inclination to find the missing elements in the story too, something that can only be done by proceeding to the story below the headline. In the case of nominalization, USA Today differs from other newspapers. The lexicogrammar of USA Today is more in line with the default assumptions of Montgomery’s model, that newspapers prefer nominalization; however, the rest of the newspapers don’t follow this model in terms of nominalization. According to the 18 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova model, headlines will usually tend to use nominalizations because through nominalizations, they achieve several goals: they keep the agents and doers of the actions ambiguous, and they manage to compress a lot of information otherwise expressed in the form of adjectives and verbs into the form of a noun phrase, leaving other details to the rest of the story and the ‘tactical incompleteness strategy’ that stimulates the interest of the reader to continue to do so. This may be due to the more dominant use of ‘individualization strategy’ that causes the headline to use the names of famous political figures explicitly and the political clashes between them, ruling out the otherwise marked recourse to nominalization. ‘Non-finite clauses’ and ‘lexical-compounding’ have not been used to a great extent by the five newspapers. In terms of these lexico-grammatical devices, the newspapers don’t fall in line with the default assumptions of Montgomery’s model. However, the headlines in The New York Times and Washington Post are more colorful in terms of lexico-grammatical devices. Both of them used ellipsis, nominalization, non-finite clauses, and lexical-compounding. The use of these devices makes for linguistic parsimony and economy in space, attracting the attention of the readers through ‘tactical-incompleteness strategy’. USA Today and Los Angeles Times take a moderate approach in this regard, while The Wall Street Journal tends to use ‘full sentence’, which makes its headlines more informative. Conclusion The aim of this research study was to examine linguistic devices in headlines in the political section of five most widely read and established American newspapers. Based on the used model, some conclusions can be drawn, and some comments can be made. These are touched on one by one below, for ease of reference: - Linguistic devices are essential in newspaper style; their essential role seems to be especially perceived by the news writers. They know that headlines help attract the readers’ attention and make them proceed to reading the actual news item. - In terms of the semantics of headlines, the selected newspapers in this study fell in line with the default and predicted manner in Montgomery’s model. - In terms of the lexico-grammar of headlines, the news headlines from the 5 newspapers in this study demonstrated both common and different features. In the extensive use of ‘full sentence’ and ‘ellipsis’, all Linguistic Devices Used in Newspaper Headlines 19 newspapers showed similar patterns. In the case of ‘nominalization’, ‘non-finite clause’, and ‘lexical-compounding’, The New York Times and Washington Post headlines followed Montgomery’s model. This indicates that these two newspapers keep to a style of conventionality in headline language. USA Today and Los Angeles Times maintain a moderate approach. However, the headlines from The Wall Street Journal avoided a conventional language in newspaper headlines, which also meant its style seems to move away from Montgomery’s model, at least for the headlines and the topic in this study. - Another conclusion is that, in terms of functions of headlines, almost all headlines instantly inform the reader of the news and the theme to be touched on, while still persuading them that the article is worth reading and proceeding to. - In terms of discourse strategies, an important conclusion is that almost half of the headlines have flattening effect and most of them have an eye out for ‘tactical incompleteness strategy’ as an essential and allimportant ingredient in headline construction. Some comments in the spirit of refining Montgomery’s (2007) model of analyzing news headlines are in order here. The following are arguments that Montgomery will most likely agree with, but that he has not brought up in quite the same way. - It seems that there is an implicit-explicit continuum in the semantic and discourse categories of the model, in the sense that, the more implicit a choice in one component is (for example in category-bound activities and MCDs and the clash with MCD), the more the reader is made to feel the need to proceed to the story to discover the story and resolve the ambiguity and the implicitness, the details the news writer have eagerly masked and kept tucked away after the headline. - This also ties up with the tactical incompleteness strategy. The latter we suggest is more prevalent than what Montgomery argues. Having gone through the analysis of this data, we would argue that ‘tactical incompleteness’ seems to be crucially and integrally built into most of the categories in this model and almost all news headlines. - The more explicit these semantic and discourse choices are in the headlines, the surer the reader would be of category-bound activities, the membership of the social agents in terms of the social groups and 20 Yaser Hadidi, Ilham Taghiyev, Saadat Ahmadova practices they belong and subscribe to, the activities they are expected to engage in, etc. - Looked at from another mirroring perspective, the more implicit these semantic and discourse choices in news headlines are, the more the reader expects and feels the need to carry on to the story itself in order to resolve this unresolved status of category-bound activities, the MCD, and the real nature of the opposition and clash between and among the social groups, the social agents, the expected social practices (categorybound activities), and the conflicts therein. 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